Reaction to "Swallow barn"

To start, I finally fixed my blog since it wasn't allowing me to post new blogs. I had this done on time but it wouldn't allow me to publish it!

John Pendleton Kennedy’s Swallow barn catches the essence of a plantation. Prior to reading Kennedy’s work, I knew very little about plantations and I didn’t know exactly what they looked like. When the plantation was described in Swallow barn, it was difficult for me to imagine it. I am a very visual person when I read things and I always try to imagine what these things look like when I read. However, the depiction of the plantation was difficult to imagine not knowing much of plantations, especially this one. Swallow barn had not been lived in for a long time, and was filled with a bunch of rubbish and was viewed as old. The description of swallow barn seemed unappealing, but there was beauty in the oldness of it. Since the description of swallow barn was hard to comprehend, I find it hard to believe that rubbish can be beautiful. I didn’t agree with this part of Kennedy’s writing, but if I saw an actual picture of this then I could possibly change my mind.
The main character in Swallow barn was Frank Meriwether, a rich slave owner. I did not like the personality of Meriwether; mainly for the fact that he felt he was superior to the rest of the world. The first sentence in Kennedy’s work that had to do with Frank Meriwether gave me my opinion of him immediately. He came off as conceited and flaunted his “great” looks. Meriwether was described as wearing a large straw hat lined with green silk. I feel that Kennedy incorporated these details of his appearance to get the point across to the reader that Meriwether was wealthy, which added to his snood personality. Meriwether felt he was superior to the people in his surroundings mainly for the fact that he went to Washington and came back with a lot of knowledge about politics, and claimed he could change the world. When I first read about this, I though Meriwether was either a governor or held some kind of important role in society. However, when it was discussed in class, I had a better grasp on the realness of Meriwether’s role, and that was that he held no important role. He wanted people to think he could change the way things worked and make everything better for people overall.
There were many stereotypes about the south at the time of slavery in Swallow barn. For instance, the female slave was described as doing the laundry and taking care of household chores. They were stated as only be good enough to work for the white man, and it was proven in Kennedy’s work. It confused me how it was stated that Frank Meriwether’s slaves liked him, and it seemed to me that the slaves and Frank were friends. I didn’t understand this part, but it made me feel like Frank was against slavery in a sense, but that it was the normal thing to do at that time. I had mixed feelings about Frank because he came off as such a conceited person but then claimed that his slaves enjoyed him.
Overall, this reading was much easier to read than several other works we read in class. It was much more understandable, and I was able to comprehend what Kennedy was trying to say.

John Smith Reading Assignment

The two stories that I read about this week were “A Description of New Endland” and “The Generall Historie of Virginia” by John Smith. This first week's reading assignment was different than most things that I read about. The reading for this week was not the type of reading I would choose to read for my own enjoyment, but I tried to get into the reading as best I could. It took me a longer time to read the assigned reading than it usually takes me to read short stories. The language was confusing to me because many words were misspelled and I found myself trying to read the words as different words due to the spelling. For example, the word “for” was spelt “forre” and I found myself reading this as it was spelled in the reading, and realizing it was a mistake. The language was hard to understand, but after reading the same paragraphs over and over again, I understood the stories. I took many notes on the side of the pages for these two readings, to make sure I understood what was going on. After I read through these two stories I reread them again to make sure I had the full grasp of the knowledge I was supposed to be obtaining. Once we reviewed the stories the following class, I felt much better about the readings. Questions I had were answered, and parts of both stories where there was confusion were cleared up. I feel that I will have to do a lot more work than I usually do when I read due to the different language, but I feel I will be able to handle it. It was a good feeling after we reviewed the stories in class to know that I really did understand them. When I began reading the reading assignments I was very apprehensive and scared I was going to have a very difficult time understanding, but everything worked out for me in the end.